Saturday, August 8, 2009

The Pittsburgh area shootings at an LA Fitness center by gunman George Soldini has left 5 dead and 15 wounded. While getting a lot of attention, for a variety of reasons, including the killer's diary, his resentment towards women, loner behavior, and failed attempt to become a Pick-Up Artist (PUA), the killings and shootings by George Soldini are troubling for a number of reasons beyond the personal tragedy.

First, there were no warning signs that the individual was a danger to others. Unlike the Columbine killers, Klebold and Harris, who gave ample warning of impending danger, or the Virginia Tech shooter, Seung-Hui Cho, who was demonstrably a danger to himself and others, or the neo-Nazi James Van Brunn (the Holocaust museum shooter), George Soldini was a quiet, middle aged, middle class professional who never by all accounts, came to the attention of law enforcement or mental health authorities. Short of an unconstitutional psych screening dragnet for every male 15-65, there was no way to know of the danger posed by Soldini.

Second, while violence by various lone men or small groups of men is not uncommon in America, the recent trend towards targeting large groups of innocent people is very new, and disturbing.

Third, the actions of men during many of these shootings in the United States and in Canada, are troubling, and a big reversal of what was previously the case. Which in and of itself points to a troubling new reality.

Fourth, and finally, the danger posed by lone men or small groups of loner-type men like Soldini is far overshadowed by the larger danger: men simply abandoning any investment in society and failing to preserve and protect society.

Soldini left a detailed online diary which can be seen at Half Sigma in its entirety. His principal aim in the shootings seems to have been to kill an ex-girlfriend of many years (a goal oddly not mentioned in his diary) and humiliate and destroy his mother and brother, whom he hated. His brother, by all accounts, was a successful businessman and is married.

At no time was Soldini ever identified as a man who was likely to enter an LA Fitness aerobics class and shoot up the place, targeting mostly women in their thirties and forties. He was by all accounts a fit and trim man in his late forties. He survived rounds of layoffs at the law firm where he worked as an IT professional. His net worth was over $250,000. Neighbors did not know any odd behavior, and his lack of intimate friends allowed his growing mental illness (of which he was well aware of) to proceed to its deadly conclusion. By all accounts he was able to get dates (though they went nowhere) and was invited to at least one Christmas party. He was able to function socially and conceal his intentions enough that no one had any idea he was intending to kill people.

This is different than most of the other killers of his nature in modern America. When McVeigh was arrested for the Oklahoma City bombings, none who knew him were surprised, and Klebold, Harris, and Cho all left a trail of warnings and signs that clearly indicated they were dangerous. If there are other men like Soldini, planning the same type of thing, they will be impossible to stop, since no one will know their intentions until too late. It seems that Soldini's web diary, simply sat online, unread, until the shootings. His postings on YouTube of his video tour of his apartment was unremarkable.

Mental illness is not something new. Nor is the combination of mental illness and firearms. The Walker Colt dates back to the 1840's. The Henry Rifle from the late 1850's had a 16 round magazine. The Smith and Wesson Schofield revolver introduced in the 1870's had a top break action with metallic cartridge feed. Firearms had been put to use for killing, or trying to kill, political leaders in America, particularly the President, since 1835 when a deranged ex house painter named Richard Lawrence tried to shoot Andrew Jackson with two pistols (both single-shot pistols, which misfired). Legend has it that Jackson tried to kill his assailant with his cane, and aides had to restrain him, while Davy Crockett and others restrained Lawrence (who was later institutionalized). John Wilkes Booth, Charles Guiteau, Leon Czolgosz, Giuseppe Zangara, would all appear to be at least partly motivated in their killings by mental illness. Nor indeed is mass violence using bombs new either, considering the Gunpowder Plot of 1605.

Yet all of these are understandable in a way. The Gunpowder plot was a far-fetched but not totally implausible desire to install King James daughter, Princess Elizabeth as a Spanish pawn to restore Catholic England. Booth hoped killing Lincoln would inspire continued Southern guerrilla warfare. The others were mentally ill men who hoped by killing a prominent man, their mental troubles would cease, not unlike Mark David Chapman or John Hinckley Jr. Even before reliable, repeating firearms, men like Henry IV fell to assassin's blades. Henry's assassin, Ravaillac, being quite similar to Czolgosz or Zangara or Lawrence. Mental illness and violence have been part of the human condition since the beginning, though the combination is usually rare, in a big enough population it will make itself known.

What is disturbing, and new, is mentally ill people targeting large groups of innocent victims whose death can in no way achieve much of anything for the killer, not even the satisfaction of killing an important man. Disturbing though it is, the actions of a Chapman or a Hinckley or a Ravaillac or a Lawrence make a kind of sense  the lunatics wanted to be famous. What is new is the desire not for fame, but for killing people the killer does not even know. Tim McVeigh targeting the Murrah building including the ground floor day-care center, or the Columbine shootings, or the Virginia Tech shootings, or the Pittsburgh LA Fitness shootings, makes no sense in terms of killing an important man and thus achieving fame (at least part of the famous man's fame would now belong to the killer). Even crazy people can have a sense of belonging.

The conspiracists of the Gunpowder plot, did not plan to blow up average Londoners. Booth and company did not plan to massacre the theater goers at Ford's Theater. None of the lone gunmen above targeted innocent people they did not know. What's changed is the lack of belonging. Of investment so wide and deep in a society, even the Ravaillacs, the Zangaras, or the Czolgoszs, unknowingly, take part in it.

The inflection point, at which society stopped having such a deep, and wide investment that even lunatics intent on killing someone would confine their attentions to individual famous people, seems to have been the 1966 University of Texas Bell Tower shootings by Charles Whitman. Whitman, who may have been insane as a result of a brain tumor, shot and killed 14 people, most of them random targets, in addition to killing his wife and mother, at the University of Texas at Austin Bell Tower (and around it). What was reassuring in that case was that professors and students spontaneously grabbed their hunting rifles and shot back at Whitman in the Bell Tower.

These were not, as Mark Steyn put it, "men who ran away." Steyn, in his article in MacLean's Magazine, excoriates the new film "Polytechnique" (about the 1989 Montreal Polytechnique Massacre by Algerian immigrant Gamil Gharbi, aka Mark Lepine who shot and killed 14 women at the Ecole Polytechnique in Montreal) with these words:

“The defining image of contemporary Canadian maleness is not M Lépine/Gharbi but the professors and the men in that classroom, who, ordered to leave by the lone gunman, meekly did so, and abandoned their female classmates to their fate—an act of abdication that would have been unthinkable in almost any other culture throughout human history. The ‘men’ stood outside in the corridor and, even as they heard the first shots, they did nothing. And, when it was over and Gharbi walked out of the room and past them, they still did nothing. Whatever its other defects, Canadian manhood does not suffer from an excess of testosterone.”

Steyn notes that nearly all the male passengers on the Titanic died, nearly all the female passengers were saved. To put it in more graphic terms, while only 31% of the people on board the Titanic survived, a full 72% of women survived, and only 19% of men survived. Women did go first. The men did not run away.

What disturbed me the most, about the accounts of the Virginia Tech shootings, was the total passivity of the young men, in protecting their female classmates. The only men who did anything at all, active, were Professor Liviu Librescu, an elderly Holocaust survivor, and and Professor Kevin Granata, a mid forties Army Reservist. None of the young men attempted to fight Cho, the shooter, particularly as he was reloading, wrestle the gun away from him, or do anything active in confronting and stopping the shooter. It was a passive response of men profoundly disinterested and uninvested in their society. One deeply at odds with the response at the sinking of the Titanic or the UT Bell Tower shootings.

Which leads to the most disturbing thing about our society today. Even with the rash of shootings, America is so big (303 million people and counting) that the shootings have only a minor affect on society, outside the tragedy for the victims and survivors. But the shootings point to a larger issue: the loss of investment of men in society. An investment that keeps even crazy people from targeting society itself, particularly innocent people, and makes men respond to a threat by risking or giving up their lives to save it's foundation: women and children.

The real risk is not mentally ill men like Soldini (it's usually, but not always, men who do the shooting). It is the massive under-investment in society, particularly civil society, that is the real risk. I am on the board of a local, Southern California charity. I am the youngest man there, all others being considerably older, in their late sixties or older. The only female member is also of that age. The North Santa Ana Kiwanis, in Orange County, dating back to the 1950's, has disbanded due to lack of members (most existing members were in their late sixties or seventies). In the Black community, it's even worse  Little Leagues and general volunteer coaching, still alive in suburban White America, (with Latino America somewhere in-between) are almost non-existent in Black America. The plague of single motherhood, and lack of investment and involvement of older, family men who form generally the backbone of volunteer coaching for Little League, Pop Warner Football, and other organized team sports activities that teach boys how to cooperate with each other and be aggressive within the rules, has destroyed Black baseball. Look at any Major League Baseball and notice what you don't see: the large presence of US Black players, who were a force in Major League Baseball since Jackie Robinson. In their place, Caribbean players from places where volunteer coaching still exists.

A general rule of thumb is that the health of a society is indicated by the existence of middle-class volunteer organizations that offer both fellowship and a sense of belonging to society, in the process of maintaining society. This can be volunteer run sports-leagues, that teach boys the importance of teamwork and aggression within strict rules (or in other words, sportsmanship) or charitable organizations like Kiwanis or Shriners or Lions Club that provide civic involvement in cooperation with local governments, and also an important alternative and check to overweening power by abusive local officials.

The generally poor state of traditional volunteer organizations, with many long-time Kiwanis, Lions, and Shriners chapters closing as their members age and no replacements are found, indicate that many younger men, particularly the generation that should be succeeding these older men, which is men in their fifties, forties, and thirties, have no interest or investment in society and traditional volunteering. Most other volunteer organizations, such as the Sierra Club, or Humane Society, or Habitat for Humanity, have long since changed into big, professional fundraising and political activist groups. Leaving little for the would-be volunteer to both socialize and contribute to society.

While gang-related murders are down, in Los Angeles, compared to times past, not very many involve an arrest, much less conviction (about 42% in 2007, according to the LA Times). From the LA Times blog:

Community attitudes and behaviors and prosecutors’ thresholds for filing homicide charges may have more to do with whether murderers end up behind bars than any particular law-enforcement model.

It's vital to have a wide and deep investment in society by men. Men being invested in society are husbands and fathers, who maintain ownership in society, provide critical community attitudes, particularly guidance and control of young boys, and create social attitudes that control and channel violence.

The Black community is America's canary in the coalmine. Being more fragile, with far greater propensity for single motherhood, Black America's fall into (at least as far as the urban core is concerned) chaotic gang violence characterized by a total absence of any adult male investment in society, is both rapid and chilling. As Barack Obama relates in "Dreams from My Father: A Story of Race and Inheritance," older residents in a Chicago housing project fondly recalled the days of Segregation, for the relative security that was found: children could play in the streets and doors were generally unlocked. This was not a society without it's problems, illegitimacy may have run as high as 24%. But it worked, to produce even under Segregation, a generation of mostly law-abiding, useful and productive citizens who maintained a sense of ownership in their society. Even a discriminated against Black man could and did marry, have his own family, and thus be invested in at least his own community. Segregated New Orleans, the center then of Black America, was famous for its many, many benevolent societies that offered everything from life insurance to health plans for dental and medical care. Theodore Dalrymple, in his "Life at the Bottom" noted much the same, how deprived, ration-impoverished East London in the 1950's was a place where children played unsupervised and doors were often left unlocked. Neither thinkable now.

Tellingly, both Britain and Black America suffered the decline of the nuclear family and traditional marriage worst and first, with single motherhood and consequent non-investment by men producing a Dante-esque hell.

The problem of violence is not men like George Soldini, who though they may occur more and more frequently, targeting innocents in a sexual rage, unable to find intimacy and a sense of belonging to society (and thus the need to protect it), are still not fundamental threats to society's well being. America being a very big nation.

No, the problem of violence is more akin to that of gang-ridden inner cities, and their stormy petrels of what is to come to other communities, including the White community. Gang violence is never "senseless." It makes perfect sense  gang members wish to be known as killers because it gives them prestige and power, and thus, women, who in the changed environment of single motherhood norms, prefer such men and boys. Average Bro has his own take on things, and like many other Black bloggers believes that women like actress Lauren London, who opined that she liked thugs, is not unrepresentative of at least some Black women. Any time a gang member engages in a "senseless" killing, it is wise to remember that the killing, from the gang member's perspective, makes perfect sense, it's designed to gain him sex.

This then, is the real danger of male uninvestment in society. Not only do men do the bare minimum to get by, but lacking families and a reproductive interest in society, they don't volunteer and engage in community "ownership" which prevents a thug-gangsta mentality from taking over. The experience of "chav" Britain suggests that this model can be rapidly reproduced. Few in Britain in 1948 would have predicted a 50% illegitimacy rate, and rampant crime. Yet in sixty years, that was precisely what happened to Britain. Instead, men compete to be the biggest gangsta and chav they can be, with varying degrees of violence. Or remain, passive and uninvolved in the face of danger to the community.

68 comments:

Anonymous
said...

I and most of my friends have very little investment in this society. We are not inclined to care about the people around us.

Worse we were all raised by very risk adverse mothers. If the bully wants your lunch money, hand it over. That's better than getting beat up. If someone is being mugged or hurt, don't help them! You might get hurt! Personal safety at the expense of all else was always drummed into our heads in the 80s.

I think the Gamil Gharbi/Polytechnique case was more about boys being told not to fight back and they just let it happen to keep themselves safe.

I have only seen data for Major League players, and your claim could be correct at the minor league level, but there is pretty much a proportionate amount of black American players in the major leagues.

If you look at the percentage of blacks among American born players in the Major Leagues it is very, very close to the percentage of blacks in American.

The slight of hand used when decrying the current percentage of black Americans in the Major Leagues is in not pointing out the much larger percentage of foreign born players from Central and South American and Asia that have made their way to the world's top league and only looking at the percentage of blacks in the Major Leagues as a whole.

Some random thoughts: Your observation about the aging of volunteer class was interesting. That is happening in my area as well. Re coaching boys: A couple of things. Once upon a time you could step out of your car and on to the field and be a Little League coach. Now it seems coaches need to be 'certified'. I don't know what that entails, but I don't want to jump through that hoop. Also don't want to contend with little girls on the team. They should be playing softball with their own sex.

Overall good post, but the Caribbean baseball player example doesn't work for me.

Maybe family values and the spirit of volunteerism are indeed better there, but it also has baseball academies that do not exist in the USA. They are cheap to run there, and potentially more lucrative since the players often sign on the cheap and bypass the draft and the college system. Hanley Ramirez, the frontrunner for the NL batting title, never entered the draft.

Also, junior league football requires just as much if not more funding and parental involvement as little league, and yet we haven't seen a decline in black representation for football.

I'll concede that there are differential factors. Whites are more likely to be turned off by the violence and injury risk in football, when compared to baseball. Football is also more immediately rewarding at the high school and college levels than baseball.

Anyway, I'm not disagreeing with the overall message of your post. But the baseball player example reduces a very complex phenomenon to what I think is one of the least important factors.

Blacks as the "canary in the coal mine" is a very important message. Our libertine revolution has caused a majority of blacks to return to jungle culture at an unbelievably fast pace. Whites may naturally be less inclined to such reversion, but our more gradual acceptance of it only serves to obscure the problem. With a rapidly increasing immigrant population who have never experienced Western culture, we're trending toward a majority that lives by utterly primitive values.

Groups of innocent civies are easier to reach than famous people, and you still get on the news for months at a time.

The only group I can think of off the top of my head that has a strong group identity and few out of wedlock births is...well... geeks. When we can get married, we tend to stay married. We don't do Kawanis, but even paint ball geeks will spend weeks working on something for their community.

Kinda sad when the only wide-spread group I can think of that fits a healthy society is geeks.....

(Of course, we were also taught to fight back by years of teasing and being picked on-- and tend to have at least some parental support. I can still remember my mom facing down the school admin that tried to insist I be expelled, at age six, because I fought back against an 8th grader who tried to beat me up.)

TGGP -- The Gunpowder plotters were fairly far-fetched, but supposing they had blown up the King and Parliament, what then? They might (by a slim margin) have gotten Spain to launch another Armada and land troops to assist them in putting down all the Gentry that were NOT in Parliament and had no appetite for Catholic Rule by a Spanish pawn. But nearly everything would have had to have gone right.

You are correct that it was in any event a political motivation.

McVeigh, however, despite his political ramblings, targeted an obscure federal building with a day care center on the ground floor. Even had he gotten away (with the entire Federal investigatory resources focused on finding the perpetrators, a slim chance at best) what would he have accomplished?

Killing a bunch of people with no results other than loathing for the killer (and whatever philosophy might be expressed). Since no one McVeigh killed was powerful, and a good number children below the age of 8. People do not like child-killers -- they in fact loathe them.

You are missing the entire point. We've always had crazy people killing people. The crazies generally target famous people to gain some of their fame. Prior to say, 1950 or so, it was unknown for individual or small groups of plotters to aim to kill lots of ordinary people. [This leaves aside serial killers who aim not to be discovered and do their killing in stealth/secret.]

There wouldn't be any fame, and even the lunatics had a sense of belonging to society. That's now not the case.

There are very many famous people, many who walk around without bodyguards. Lee Harvey Oswald's switch in targets from the Texas militia leader to JFK suggests fame-seeking lunatics can be flexible in their targets.

As Timothy McVeigh was a dutiful citizen he was upset by the constant injustices he saw being wrought by agents of the American Government. He finally became so upset at these injustices that he decided that his duty demanded he fight this agency, and the only way he knew to fight the agents of the American government was to blow up one of their buildings.

Like all dutiful soldiers McVeigh carried out his attack with ruthless determination coupled with scant concern for his safety. His well planned attack was in stark contrast to his unrealistic plan for escape. The bombing on 19/4/1995 in Oklahoma City, which killed 168 people, was followed by his almost inevitable prompt arrest, to which he offered no resistance.

McVeigh did not believe he had committed a crime but that he had struck a blow for justice. Inevitably the courts of the American government sentenced him to death, which was what McVeigh expected from his enemy.

At the risk of derailing the thread, I join in dissenting with regard to McVeigh. "Obscure" is a questionable adjective. Obscure to whom? The fact is the Murrah Federal Building was a substantial building on any scale, and represented the significant centralization of power and concomitant risk for abuse, precisely the latter of which McVeigh appeared to object to. I understand it:

"[C]ontained [the] regional offices for the Social Security Administration, Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI), the Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA), and the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms, and Explosives (ATF). The building also contained recruiting offices for both the Army and the Marine Corps. It housed approximately 550 employees." Wikipedia.

Being inarticulate ("political ramblings") does not mean one is wrong, or not on to something.

More to the point, your we've-always-had-crazy-people misses the point which I think even you are trying to make. But, alas, you are on to something, and that something is the question of what sets them off; why this particular sin?

For many reasons, and probably some irrational 'reasons,' the axis now isn't class, or race, or nationality, or dogma or ideology or a whole raft of things mankind has argued and fought over but, to a large extent, gender --the battle of the sexes. This murderer is a data point in that conflict. The fact that he didn't personally know the women he killed doesn't or didn't matter per his logic. Did French and German soldiers know each other or have personal grudges against each other for the hundreds of years they fought? No. So, no, the so called trend is not a trend on that point.

Where I think you are right on is the passivity of men problem; the men not invested issue.

But, you know, this is directly related to McVeigh. Think of what you wrote about "civic involvement in cooperation with local governments, and also an important alternative and check to overweening power by abusive local officials."

I was surprised that you (and Feeblemind) did not mention one potential reason for decreased male civic engagement. Western countries have are being strangled by litigation & red tape. Sexual liberation has, paradoxically, come hand-in-hand with a hysteria regarding child sexual exploitation/abductions. Witness the success of "To Catch a Predator", Law & Order SVU, and miscellaneous cop shows/news magazines that fixate on this type of thing. Even a licentious society like ours needs scapegoats & deviants to focus on, and contemporary Westerners' lack of sexual inhibitions seems to have the effect of making our response to taboo-breakers all the more intense.

If you read the online comments for any news story dealing with pedophilia, commentators almost unanimously advocate hideous physical torture for the perp - whether the community's a "red" or "blue" state. I've read of male coaches innocently videotaping their own players during games - only to get screamed at & threatened by other adults in the vicinity. One Catholic priest recalled stopping to chat with a few preteen baseball players - only to have adults neaby call him a pervert to his face.

This brand of paranoid McCarthyism legitimizes misandry and makes men understandably wary about participating in civic activities - particularly, those involving contact with children, the elderly/demented, and mentally handicapped persons. Feeblemind spoke of men wandering onto baseball fields in the past and asking for coaching jobs - these days such men would be lucky not to get grilled by the cops. I am a male in my 20's who sometimes supervises children for neighbors; although I have never refused anyone, I find myself more and more reluctant to be alone with them. It doesn't help that at least one man at my former church was all but destroyed by a child's false rape accusation several years ago.

In actuality, most sex abuse involves children and immediate family members, as opposed to the creepy strangers of news magazine lore. Neverhtheless, considering that feminists and social conservatives alike benefit from the moral panic over male civic involvement, I imagine that the problem is going to get worse before it gets any better.

There's a guy who works for the ranch my folks work on who is classed as a "child sex predator."

Three months after he moved away from the ex, about the same time she ran out of money, her daughter suddenly came up with claims he'd been assaulting her the whole time he and her mother were dating.

The guy is... very dim. I don't think he's legally handicapped, but he is very, very not bright, and looks scuzzy to boot. He's still making payments to the woman, some 7 years later. (Couldn't get work because of the parole requirements and the record.)

McVeigh had his grievances, but there was no way in either Heaven or Earth blowing up a bunch of obscure government workers in an obscure part of the country (Oklahoma is not exactly on the media radar) with a bunch of small children would achieve political support.

IMHO, the children were the main target. McVeigh's stated grievances were not the reason he attacked, rather the ongoing war between the sexes. Other people's children. The Gunpowder plot at least had the possibility of success, had McVeigh escaped, and evaded identification, what would he have accomplished?

McVeigh was the opposite of Howard Jarvis. Jarvis was old, fat, cranky, and untelegenic. He did however know how to organize and put the fear of angry voters into politicians. Jarvis had a goal, organized to achieve it, and mostly accomplished it. McVeigh had nothing but grievance. He was against many things but "for" nothing. IMHO he really just wanted to kill other people's kids. Because he had none. Like Sodini / Soldini (sp?) sought to kill women he had no connection to, because he had no connections.

Plenty of crazy people can function for decades in Hollywood. One of the Wachowski Brothers went to Sweden, had a sex change operation, and now has a Dominatrix by his/her side, while his face looks like a melted wax candle. Yet he/she and his/her brother were handed "Speed Racer" and presumably other projects to follow.

I do think there is a crisis in gender relations, part of it characterized by sporadic and unpredictable acts of violence, but the worst being simple withdrawal. It's almost impossible to get people to provide serious commitments to volunteer (and we get none from the Hispanic community whom we primarily service) and those who do are all considerably older than 65.

I should have mentioned this in my earlier post, but, for what it's worth, I understood McVeigh said he didn't know about the day-care center.

"The authors Lou Michel and Dan Herbeck, reporters for The Buffalo News, said in a taped interview for "PrimeTime Thursday" that McVeigh told them he did not know there was a day-care center inside the Alfred P. Murrah Federal Building.

""If I had known there was an entire day-care center, it might have given me pause to switch targets. That's a large amount of collateral damage," McVeigh said, according to the ABC interview."http://archives.cnn.com/2001/US/03/29/mcveigh.book.01/index.html

And furthermore, I have to correct my previous comment. McVeigh's attack was not directly related. IMHO he wasn't aiming for the children, for other peoples children. It wasn't directly related, but indirectly, through a long line of logic and causation, quite attenuated, the reasoning of which I was attempting to hint at by using your own words.

Where is your evidence that he was after the kids? Any admissions by McVeigh?

He was a young man. There was no way he was as hopeless vis a vis reproduction as this other guy. No, McVeigh was an angry young man who became a mass murderer based on some sound and some misguided political thoughts having to do with centralized government; he saw it as becoming more and more tyrannical. He wanted to bring it down, a la "Fight Club" or something. That he may have had problems with women was very tangential. The reason I mentioned it, mistakenly, in my earlier comment is that, again, by a long line of reasoning, the way we have set up the government --and the laws, has had an effect on male-female relations which could reasonably be seen as deleterious.

FBI agent Danny Defenbaugh says he has no doubt McVeigh knew the day-care center was there.

"No matter what ... if you look at the building, you're going to see all the little cut-out hands, all the little apples and flowers showing that there's a kindergarten there -- that there are children in that building," Defenbaugh told CNN Correspondent Susan Candiotti in an exclusive interview.

Whiskey said:"It's almost impossible to get people to provide serious commitments to volunteer (and we get none from the Hispanic community whom we primarily service) and those who do are all considerably older than 65."

I have noticed something similar with the charity work I did as a kid. Do you think it's due to people assuming the government handles stuff like that?

Those Virginia Tech boys, the alphas and betas, were damn sure not going to risk taking any bullets from Cho.

Cho was a classic Omega male. No girls in his life, no romantic prospects, no interest from females at all. Ignored totally. Only when he acted intimidating and problematic did people notice him. He was an invisible kid because the girls didn't find him attractive, and none of the guys could forsee him being a competent wingman. Loneliness at his age was more than his feeble mind could bear and he struck back at the world.

The alphas around that attack wouldn't intervene because pussy is a dime-a-dozen for them. The betas wouldn't intervene because they subconciously know they wont be getting any women until they are near 30 anyway, and then only for their house and the ability to provide. The alphas are getting all the sex.

This left no-one to step up and try to inhibit Cho, thus risking himself. Nobody thought they were vested in society. But there are larger issues of this divestment than mere sexual protocols. There are racial one's as well. White males (Va Tech is still pretty white) are effectively discriminated against academically in favor of lower scoring minorities and females all the time. They are the "fucked-over" group in college and in hiring. They are looking out for number one because the only way they can "make it" is to accumulate more wealth than others in many cases, in order to have a family and attract a moderately attractive female. They are told they are the "discriminators" for things that happened back before they were born, they are watching themselves become a minority in the country their fathers founded and built and called racist if they dont openly applaud it, they are called sexist all the time literally no matter what they do (ask a gal out: sexist. Dont ask a gal out: he hates women. Refuses to see Brokeback Mountain: homophobic). These guys know the establishment makes them their boogeyman constantly despite the fact they do so little illegal or harmful relative to the other demographics.

Take a bullet from a "brown" immigrant to save politically-correct white girls who endlessly call them sexists? I kinda doubt they are inclined to do so.

I read that too. Heck, it was my cite. And, of course, it is the supposition of a government agent. Doesn't mean it's automatically false. But you'll admit the government --FBI investigators, prosecutors, etc, had an interest in making inferences that would cast McVeigh in the worst light possible. In my limited research, I haven't found any admission on his part --which would of course be greatly against his own interest and the interest of his hoped for political legacy, and, therefore, under the rules of evidence and commons sense, that much more credible for being so, that he knew beforehand that there definitely were children in the building. If you find something, I would be glad to read it and adjust my views accordingly.

Who would I choose to believe... the guy on trial who, from the appeals filed, didn't want to die... or the guy who says "if you looked at the place enough to do crud, you COULD NOT miss the kiddy handprints and art in the windows."

Common sense says that the FBI agent wouldn't have claimed that the artwork was insanely easy to see if it could be shown to not be.

"I feel sorry for the man," she said, referring to Timothy J. McVeigh, the main suspect. "Because he is so sick. No one in their right mind would pull their vehicle right under the window where the cribs were.

"You could see them there, in the windows. People always liked to walk by, on the sidewalk, and look at the babies there."

But now that we know that the killer was not a Muslim, should I feel embarrassed about my prejudice? No. The truth of the matter is that George Sodini's life is not any different than that of the average Muslim male. According to his online diary (2), Sodini hadn't had a girlfriend since 1984 and hadn't slept with a woman for 19 years. What Sodini didn't know was that he was doing far better than most Muslim men in Sharia-compliant countries where it is impossible to sleep with a woman not your wife unless you rape her. If one can imagine how hopeless and angry and bitter George Sodini felt, then one can also imagine how easy it is to recruit depressed young Muslim men with no way out of their misery other than death.

The problem with Muslim terror is that there is an endless supply of angry, bitter, hopeless, sexually frustrated young Muslim men. Why there are so many angry, bitter, hopeless, sexually frustrated young Muslim men is because Islamic society makes them so.

Grim -- I don't know. I do know that accorging to Volunteering in America, nearly all volunteers are White. The Median age of volunteers is around 60 IIRC, nationally. When I volunteered for McCain (I hated the prospect of an Obama victory, not that I liked in any way McCain) I found nearly all the volunteers were older, and mostly older women (brought in by Sarah Palin, btw). Kiwanis, Lions, Shriners etc. do accept women but remain mostly male in members.

Robert Putnam ("Bowling Alone") has (reluctantly for him, he's very liberal) done studies showing that increased diversity creates a "hunkering down effect" and people not only exhibit distrust across racial boundaries but within them. Mexico, for example, has voluntary associations inside its more prosperous regions. But no volunteering of any real scale occurs in the second most populous Mexican city, Los Angeles, which is dead last in volunteering according to Volunteering in America. First Place? Salt Lake City.

Z and Lucifer, those are good points. Sodini did indeed live as a Muslim. It's been estimated that as many as a third of marriages in Saudi Arabia are polygamous, which would explain the high level of jihadis supplied by that nation despite its wealth.

The problem with Muslim terror is that there is an endless supply of angry, bitter, hopeless, sexually frustrated young Muslim men.

That does tend to be the result of polygamous cultures; this is relevant because the single-mother-supported-mostly-by-the-state setup makes for a quasi version of this-- higher competition for the "bad boys." As evidence I offer these idiots.

"Take a bullet from a "brown" immigrant to save politically-correct white girls who endlessly call them sexists? I kinda doubt they are inclined to do so."

"Z" does have a very good point. This theme seems to thread through many issues. Look at the "War on Terror" for example. Republican white guys are fighting and dying to protect Democrat civilians who are mostly upper-class women in blue-state cities.

Or, look at the case of the Iranian "Revolution". The symbol is some liberal-looking woman who got shot in the eye.

It's come to the point where I look at these matters in terms of race, gender, or political affiliation and then calculate whether I am somehow affected.

Thanks for the NY Times link. I googled Melva and found another article saying she owned the center for three weeks. So I've been googling around to find out when the day care center opened; when, if ever, he or his co-conspirators did their recon (September 1994 per a UMKC School of Law faculty project page on the case)*; etc. I've given up on going through google images for clear photos either way. Wikipedia has a link to something saying that in May 1994 the General Office of Accounting recommended removing the day care center but I would like to see a better source. I also checked the prosecution closing statement via a michigan*http://www.law.umkc.edu/faculty/projects/FTRIALS/mcveigh/mcveightrial.html

In sum, no admission but instead a statement of surprise regarding the children in the building; no clear photo's either way --at least on this thread or that I've seen; two statements by witnesses saying anyone with eyes would have seen the children in the windows of the second-story day-care center. Too late to continue analysing from someone in EST.

So with all due respect, I'll have to do more research to be convinced. Good night.

I used to work in a psychitaric ward for violent men. The staffing almost always included women nurses, because it was found that this reduced the amount of male violence. Even severly psychotic men would not assault female staff.

Indeed, so important was this that if the staffing rotas could not place any women on the men's wards there was a general alert to be extra careful of violent incidents.

So for 'normal' men to assault women unprovoked is an extremely weird phenomenon - something almost unprecedented.

As for the failure of men to fight back during mass shooting - this too is very strange indeed. My best guess is that it would be due to demographic specifics of these men. I don't know about the Canadian shooting, but in Virginia Tech shooting the men were highly IQ-screened and highly mathematical - and I suspect that this group is probably the least violent group of males.

But the basic point is correct - these things are unprecedented in human history. Men are not really designed to be loners - they are meant to stay at home with their families unless they get married and have families of their own. Or else have surrogate families of colleagues devoted to a particular socially valued function - such as a monestary, educational establishement or army.

Wow, the first anonymous comment really nailed it! The main reason men are failing to sacrifice themselves to protect others is not a lack of investment in society (though that definitely plays a part), but simply the fact that we have been taught not to do so.

What kind of man would sacrifice his life for the group? I suggest that such a man would, compared to the average, be more dutiful, more conscientious, more apt to follow authority's instructions, and more deeply indoctrinated with society's values. But for decades, society has taught that we should not resist a mugger, not leap into the water to save a drowning swimmer, not run into a burning building, but rather we should get ourselves to safety so as not to get in the way of the properly trained authorities. These are usually the best courses of action, but the passive, let-the-professionals-handle-it mentality has been internalized by the very men who, in previous times, would have been most likely to throw themselves into danger to save others.

In the words of C.S.Lewis, "We make men without chests and expect of them virtue and enterprise. We laugh at honour and are shocked to find traitors in our midst. We castrate and bid the geldings be fruitful."

Modern universities are not representative of all America any more than than dysfunctional inner city ghettos.

You also need to take into account events like Flight 93.

See:

http://www.strategypage.com/strategypolitics/articles/20021017.asp

Students of American character should pay close attention to Flight 93. A random sample of American adults was subjected to the highest possible stress and organized themselves in a terribly brief period, without benefit of training or group tradition other than their inherent national consciousness, to foil a well planned and executed terrorist attack. Recordings show the passengers and cabin crew of Flight 93 - ordinary Americans all - exemplified the virtues Americans hold most dear.

Certain death came for them by surprise but they did not panic and instead immediately organized, fought and robbed terror of its victory. They died but were not defeated. Ordinary Americans confronted by enemies behaved exactly like the citizen-soldiers eulogized in Victor Davis Hanson's Carnage and Culture.

Herman Wouk called the heroic sacrifice of the USS Enterprise's Torpedo 8 squadron at the Battle of Midway "... the soul of America in action." Flight 93 was the soul of America, and the American people know it. They spontaneously created a shrine at the crash site to express what is in their hearts and minds but not their mouths. They are waiting for a poet. Normally a President fills this role.

But Americans feel it now. They don't need a government or leader for that, and didn't to guide their actions on Flight 93, because they really are America. Go to the crash shrine and talk to people there. Something significant resonates through them which is different from, and possibly greater than, the shock of suffering a Pearl Harbor attack at home.

Pearl Harbor remains a useful analogy given Admiral Isokoru Yamamoto's statement on December 7, 1941 - "I fear we have woken a sleeping giant and filled him with a terrible resolve." They were giants on Flight 93.

Thanks for the links. Day care center opened in 1988. Playground. Very persuasive stuff. Where was the playground --the back, the side, behind a wall?

"So, eye witness testimony from the owner isn't evidence."

I didn't say that. I'm taking it into account. Just not convinced of it against everything I've heard and read.

"FBI testimony isn't enough."

See above.

"Parking directly *directly below* the day care means nothing."

See above. Haven't you ever failed to notice something? People walk by stuff without noticing it all the time. Maybe his evil mindset wished it away; maybe he did actually see the kids but drove them from his mind because it didn't fit with his plan, but without more on what exactly was there --how the decorations were set up; where the children were, the length and tinting of the windows, signs, etc., you'll have to excuse me. Like the day care center work you cited before, I find it hard to believe he knew, but unlike her I am still not convinced. She, of course, was there, and even she admitted she had a hard time believing he knew. Did she testify? Would be interested in reading a transcript of such.

Also, re the decorations, again, how were they set up? I mean, the fact that there were Christmas decorations on an office building in and of itself is not dispositive. Are you saying every office building with a Christmas decoration must reasonably be assumed to contain a day-care center?

Re Danielle Hunt. First time I've heard of her. The government dismissed her as incredible. From what I saw, that link doesn't take us to any sworn testimony, and the report goes a little over the top journalistically, claiming at one point, without strict attribution, that McVeigh visited the daycare center. Seems like your basic internet less-than-ideally-credible allegations. I don't see your point.

Again thanks for your cites. Sure, there's some compelling evidence that he knew or should have known.

But in any event, this is a bit of a side-show. If he wanted to specifically kill kids and make a point about it, he could have gone specifically to a stand-alone, open and obvious day care center or an elementary school. If he wanted to kill women, a gym like Soldoni. Judges, a courthouse. Circus clowns, a circus. No, based on where he went, not to mention what he later said, it seems he wanted to kill federal government officials --FBI, ATF, etc. because of his mistaken political/moral ideas. He did, after all, go to one of the biggest federal buildings around and blow it up.

Christopher-look at the pictures. The flat spot, right next to the huge indent where the bomb was, that has all the wire fencing?

Haven't you ever failed to notice something?

Not when conducting an attack.

You're basically trying to claim that the word of one guy whose life was on the line that he didn't know there was a daycare outweighs multiple other people saying it was obvious, outweighs the evidence of him choosing that very spot as a target, and somehow nobody noticed the day care when they were casing the joint.

And now you're basically saying that it doesn't matter if he *did* know, because they weren't the primary targets. Uuuuh....right.

My example is exchangeable, the point is how people would react if put in a situation where they must choose between their lives and that of others, for the preservation of current society.

Also, about Flight 93: Not exactly the same situation. If I'm not mistaken they knew they were going to die either way, so the resistance they put up was a last (and successful) ditch effort to preserve the lives of others. They were not given a choice between their lives and that of others, they were only given a choice between inaction and death and action and death (not to diminish their memory, just pointing it out).

Also, the university example may not accurately represent the population at large, however, it does rather accurately represent the sample that we would want to look at, especially on this blog:

The population of liberal, "modern" men. Isn't the focus of this blog PC, modern, big-city liberal society and its pitfalls? No point including people who much closer emulate the pre-PC society in the sample.

Look at the picture. Link? http://www.dougloudenback.com/downtown/vintage/1977.murrah1.jpg? I don't see anything either way. You have something better?

"Not when conducting an attack."

Well, it's a good rule of law, I'll give you that. See common law on arson. But in my observation I've seen different.

"You're basically trying to claim that the word of one guy whose life was on the line that he didn't know there was a daycare outweighs multiple other people saying it was obvious, outweighs the evidence of him choosing that very spot as a target, and somehow nobody noticed the day care when they were casing the joint."

Pretty much, yeah.

"Nuff said."

Nice try. What, I can't bring up the main point? It's like too late to remember the main point or something? This whole thread is proof I think the truth about the kids and his intent matters.

Listen, from what I can tell, you're the military guy: McVeigh called them collateral damage. What's that mean to you? He said he was upset in part about what the government did at Waco, where kids also died.

[Question: do you unreservedly support everything the government did at Waco?]

I mean, really, what is your point? We agree he killed kids. We agree he murdered them. We agree he murdered a hundred score adults. This started with Whiskey saying he thought the kids were THE target. I'm saying, no, I don't think the kids were the target, but that the federal government was the target and so McVeigh is different from Soldoni. I never said the kids didn't matter. You're acting like the difference between primary and collateral targets, between effect and double-effect, problems of intent, and proof, and evidence don't matter. Just mashing them all together. And for what point? To say he's a bad guy? I already agreed with that --my first post: murderer. The question was, what kind of bad guy?

I say he's went to the dark side because of hate of the federal government. Not women, not kids, not clowns, not some bully in 3rd grade. And I say this based on all the evidence I've seen so far including your stuff.

I've looked at photos both before and after. I left a link to an apparently very old photo of the building showing it from the north side N.W. Fifth Street (See above comment, and cf. 1) --where the truck was parked. Where's the fencing? Where's the playground? I don't see it on N.W. Fifth Street in those shots. The fact that the daycare center was on the second floor right in the blast zone is agreed all around. And I read that link about the daycare center worker saying the cribs were visible from the street through the window and that decorations were up. I've addressed my doubts about that already: he missed it. Doesn't excuse anything, but seems plausible to me. Especially considering the main point of the whole thing.

Which main point, I can't help but fail to note, you avoid addressing.

I mean it's great that you jump in and try to offer correction on the kids point, but if not even trying to tie it in to the main discussion seems a bit cowardly. Cat got you fingers?

Finally, on second thought, it occurs to me Whiskey's take could make sense too, but for different reasons. Maybe the kids were the main target as eye for an eye payback for Waco.

1.http://www.law.umkc.edu/faculty/projects/FTrials/mcveigh/murrahdiagram.JPG, and http://www.law.umkc.edu/faculty/projects/FTrials/mcveigh/murrahbefore.jpg

What disturbed me the most, about the accounts of the Virginia Tech shootings, was the total passivity of the young men, in protecting their female classmates. The only men who did anything at all, active, were Professor Liviu Librescu, an elderly Holocaust survivor, and and Professor Kevin Granata, a mid forties Army Reservist.

It could be that these two men intervened because they were teachers and had some degree of responsibility for their classes.

I think I must be one of these uninvested males, because I just don't understand why your so eager to die for women. Why? Because there of a higher reproductive value, why else?

Ofcourse I can see how on a large scale this will only plunge society further into the abyss. Seems after being degraded to second and third class citizens by the feminists and female collective, you fellas are still eager to die in defense of women folk. Seems pretty drone like to me.

I really don't understand why a man should feel obligated to die for women, explain this rudimentary duty for me please? Why do you feel women are of such higher value than men? I can understand that men have an increased physical ability to stop such killers, but apart from that why you trying to shame them?

I don't feel the least bit dissapointed in those men who left when Mike Lepine ordered them to. Lepine was keenly aware of the feminist threat, although he fought back in a way that can only harm us all, I think to think those deserters were also aware.

I see the act of dieing for people that work actively to destroy you, who hate you, scold and insult you at every turn, as empty, pointless. I really hate these lone killers because there actions fuel the contempt of our enemies, but I just don't get your urge to die for women. Are you baby boomers or what? I mean after all the talk about women HATING beta males and wanting to reduce us to a slave class, you feel its our duty to die for the same folk who secure the chains?

The generally poor state of traditional volunteer organizations, with many long-time Kiwanis, Lions, and Shriners chapters closing as their members age and no replacements are found, indicate that many younger men, particularly the generation that should be succeeding these older men, which is men in their fifties, forties, and thirties, have no interest or investment in society and traditional volunteering.

Let me tell you what happened to me a couple of years ago. A few months apart, I tried to join two volunteer social organizations, not any of the ones you mentioned but similar in type. I had gotten the work number of the local area president of the first group and called him to inquire about attending a meeting. After some difficulty with an overprotective call-screening secretary, who didn't seem to believe that I wanted to talk to her boss in his status as the group leader and not for business purposes (I didn't even know what sort of business it was), he got on the line and said that I should show up at the group's next meeting, at a local restaurant, and just introduce myself to everyone. I told him quite sincerely that doing something like that would be quite awkward for me. It would be better if I could speak to him first, and then he could introduce me to everyone else. That wasn't the way we do things, he told me, you'll have to introduce yourself.

Needless to say, I never went to the meeting and never pursued membership any further. It wasn't the introducing myself that was the obstacle, I could have gritted my teeth and managed that if need be, but rather the group leader's complete inflexibility and unwillingness to grant my simple request.

In the case of the second organization, I actually went to a meeting. There were about 25 people present, both men and women. Almost the entire 2+ hours the meeting lasted was monopolized by three or four women who cackled back and forth about another woman (not present) whom they didn't like. The group leader was present, but made no attempt whatsoever to shut up these common scolds. It was a horrendously boring experience, and as you might imagine I didn't go back.

Students of American character should pay close attention to Flight 93 ... Certain death came for them by surprise but they did not panic and instead immediately organized, fought and robbed terror of its victory. They died but were not defeated.

Not that their resistance actually saved any lives. It's likely that the hijackers would have crashed the airplane into the Capitol - which had been evacuated. All they saved was property damage, which, if the experience of the Pentagon is any example, would have been quickly repaired.

The feminists got the society they wanted, let them protect it. Except for friends and relatives, why should I put myself out in the slightest? The bitches want men to step up when it's convenient, and remember their place the rest of the time. Screw that.

Peter/Iron -- I think in the case of the two professors, it was both general (general social conditioning to protect women) and also for the younger man, training in the Army Reserve (on the theory that doing something is better than nothing).

The Flight 93 folks, knowing their fate, did fight back. But their story has been mostly hidden, the memorial made into a "Crescent of Embrace' with "multicultural healing" and generally ignored by cultural elites who find its message and meaning very threatening. Not the least of which was ordinary people fighting back. As seen today in ObamaCare debates and Townhall meetings.

Gustav -- the Western Society is "supposed to work" or at least the basis for it from around 1000 AD to 1965, was Western women had a good deal of freedom, and more of it as society advanced. Men spent very little time mate-guarding and women's sexuality had key constraints, basically having to choose one guy fairly permanently. Alpha sexuality was controlled, mistresses were confined to a few not harems, and seducers of other men's wives were generally thought to "have it coming" if they were killed.

The social contract was that even if you were a relatively unlovely person such as the Vicar cousin of the Bennetts in "Pride and Prejudice" if you followed the rules you'd reproduce with a wife of your own. In return you were expected to give up your life for not just your wife, but women in general, and other men were expected to do the same. In a mutual covering of each other's backs.

This had advantages: little resources mate-guarding, high levels of male cooperation and trust, reduced violence, and genetic diversity, along with increased "thing-oriented" tool makers who made new and deadly tools. The Maxim Gun, for example, was not invented nor manufactured in the Ottoman Empire.

This is another data point of society breaking down in that basic contract. Since you can't force men to sacrifice themselves, and they only do it if they have a stake.

Iron/Peter -- Your experience mirrors mine with: Sierra Club, Habitat for Humanity, Heal the Bay, Surfrider, and the Humane Society. Nobody wanted my help or input. It was a club for existing members. Kiwanis and the charity I'm involved with now was different, a personal friend and mentor got me involved.

Longest comment thread I've ever seen here. I have nothing to add, except that I think all of this is a natural confluence of nature and technology. It's not really being engineered on any large scale. We've come too far, too fast.

IMHO the convenent between men and women is broken. Our protection and their providing. So why should any man take a bullet for a woman? I once held a door open (in my college) for a woman, only to have her stand in the doorway and tell me that she didn't need me to do that. So if I take a bullet for a woman (and survive) and then have her come to the hospital and tell me she didn't need me to take a bullet for her? Oh sure, she needed me when the bullets were flying, but once she's safe she's independant again! The only people I will take a bullet for are my mother, father and brother. The rest of the world I owe nothing to. Feminists (and women in general) must wake up from their lala land delusion to the reality that they are on their own she the crap hits the fan.

@BGCThe implication is that this really was a powerful taboo, so powerful as to survive a high degree of mental disintegration.

Maybe things are more genteel in Britain, but over here, men have been beating, murdering and raping women since time immemorial. Domestic violence is as old as human history. The victim then, as is now, was likely to be known to the perpetrator. In other words there was a social link. The social object of a man's hatred was proximate.

Hatred and malice needs to be directed towards an object. However, with our societies' social atomisation, the proximate objects of hatred are missing, so more distant targets must be focused on. The guys who commit these crimes are loners. They don't have anyone close by to beat or murder.

According to reporters Michel & Herbeck in their book on McVeigh, “American Terrorist”:

1. McVeigh shows Fortier the Murrah building in late December, 1994.

2. The windows of the Murrah Building at that time are described as tinted, dark, black, reflective, and a sheen. The authors use the term “dark-tinted” on page 187, while all the other terms are attributed clearly to either McVeigh or Fortier. See, esp., 187-88. Excerpt reporting “tinted windows” at http://www.prnewswire.com/cgi-bin/stories.pl?ACCT=104&STORY=/www/story/03-29-2001/0001458397&EDATE=.

3. Prosecutor Joseph Hartzler, and Fortier’s attorney, Mike McGuire, confirmed that Fortier told them he never spotted a day-care center in the Murrah Building. Chapter notes for page 368.

Meanwhile, according to the UMKC timeline, on October 20, 1994, “McVeigh and Nichols drive by the Murrah Building in Oklahoma City. They get out of their car, and time the distance to a place McVeigh would be at the time the bomb would go off.” http://www.law.umkc.edu/faculty/projects/FTrials/mcveigh/mcveighchrono.html

4. McVeigh told Jones, his defense attorney, that he did it but didn’t know there was a day-care center in the building. This was leaked to the New York Times. 183.

5. “…[I]n a December 2000 interview, Fortier’s lawyer, Michael McGuire, would confirm that Fortier never saw the day-care center. [US Prosecutor] Hartzler later confirmed that Fortier told him the same thing.” 334.

6. Also after the trial, Hartzler would “admit he had no idea if McVeigh was aware of the day-care center or not.” 319. Compare this to portions of Hartzler’s opening statement as reported in the book: ““As Helena Garrett left the Murrah Federal Building to go to work across the street, she could look back up at the building, and there was a wall of plate-glass windows on the second floor,” Hartzler said. “You can look through those windows and see into the day-care center, and the children would run up to those windows, and press their hands and faces to those windows to say goodbye to their parents.” Id, and see http://www.law.umkc.edu/faculty/projects/FTrials/mcveigh/prosecutionopen.html Hartzler is positing, at the least a contrary, factual view regarding the windows –that they were sufficiently clear to see through them.

7. The authors address the issue of why McVeigh’s defense attorney did not ask Fortier whether he or McVeigh had seen the day-care center at page 334. It was a tactical decision by his lawyers.

On the other hand: “"No matter what and how you go by that building, if you look at the building, you're going to see all the little cut-out hands, all the little apples and flowers showing that there's a kindergarten there -- that there are children in that building," Defenbaugh said.”http://edition.cnn.hu/2001/US/03/28/mcveigh.fbi/

“Common sense says that the FBI agent wouldn't have claimed that the artwork was insanely easy to see if it could be shown to not be.” Foxfier, above.

But then again, what’s good for the goose... Common sense says nobody would say the windows were insanely dark tinted and reflective if it could be shown they weren’t.

So, were they tinted or not? I don't know. Looks that way. But either way, no decorations. http://www.law.umkc.edu/faculty/projects/FTRIALS/mcveigh/murrahbefore.jpg

And, I’m finding it insanely difficult to find a good photo online in support of FBI Inspector Defenbaugh's statement above.

1) Considering their often extreme over-representation in almost all other sports, the number of blacks in baseball really has declined by a large amount over the last 20-30 years, regardless of the exact way one sets out to try and measure it.

Major League Baseball, in recognition of this, instituted the RBI (Reviving Baseball in Inner Cities) program in the early to mid-nineties.

This was before the huge influx of players from the tropical region to our south (or asia) which is so apparent to even casual fans now.

2) I keep reading that Sodini was "mentally ill", but I'm not sure the case for this being true has really been built, and it doesn't jibe with his functioning rather somewhat normally for the most part in day-to-day life -- obviously up til the point where he stepped out of obscurity. It wasn't like he was on meds or in therapy, and he wasn't a total loner; he had work associates and contact with family, so it wasn't like he was some unabomber. Since he obviously understood the ramifications of his actions, he took his own life rather than suffer the consequences. It's the truly deranged who tend not to do this, unless there is a social structure inculcating in them the kamikaze attitude -- i.e., that they're dieing for some supposed greater good.

There are plenty of guys (and gals) who couldn't scare up a real date to save their lives, so his lack of any love life doesn't exactly serve as some sign that he was "mentally ill". And there are lots of people with somewhat bizarre or poorly reasoned or strongly held ideas about all sorts of things -- male/female relations being a common area where this happens (just look at many feminist writings) -- but that doesn't mean the person holding them really qualifies for being "mentally ill". Maybe they have "issues", but some argue everyone has these to some degree or another, that in fact it's entirely normal.

It's a typical knee-jerk reaction to what at first appears to be some random incomprehensible act to call the person who did it "crazy", but to do so converts it from a structural or societal issue into a mere personal problem -- which I think is why it's done so often by the maintainers of the status quo who don't really want anyone looking behind the curtain.

Once you've diagnosed the cause as being "mental illness", no further thinking is required.

In other words, trying to combine social causes with the "mental illness" paradigm is fundamentally sort of schizo. :>

You are right on the money with young men becoming disenfranchised with society.

I am a young man and I was raised to do what was right. There was a time that I would not have meekly walked out of that room. Now, I don't know what I would do. Thinking about it something deep down inside tears at me to do the right thinking, yet my mind tells me to say bugger them there is nothing worth dying for, and my life is far more valuable than theirs.

Long before I found your blog, and just as I found the PU community (which showed me a whole new world) I met one of these omegas. I met a guy who plainly told me he wouldn't fight in a war for his country, he wouldn't risk his life for anyone and he simply didn't give a shit.

I have since met more and more people like him and they are growing in number.

At the same time I've seen a massive rise in the mimicking of gang culture among Australian youth (even outside metropolitan areas).

I read in the paper about a planned massacre in England by two high school boys. Apparently one of them called a girl and told her about it. She reported them to the cops. I wonder why he told the girl his plans?

the thing you Americans as a whole (and yes i know I'm generalizing) seem to do is Say "I'm going to go out and die to protect you!" substitue "potect you" for "country" "Flag" etc..

Why do you have to die to protect them.

I'm English and one of the great things about the English especially in my experiance the Armed Forces (army brat) is that the English squaddie isn't going to go out and die to protect you but he will Kill anyone thats trying to hurt you.

If he dies in the process thats bad luck but my god he'll try to survive first and foremost!

The men in these situations where scared no if's no buts no maybe's and there isn't a single one of us that can say what we'd do unless we've been in the situation and know how we'd react. I like to think that if I saw someone in trouble I'd help, but i don't know that i would. Would I jump infront of bullet to Save you?